Chapter 135Conditional, Temporal, and Concessive Clauses

135.1 The conditional, concessive, and adversative subsystem

Hokkaido Ainu marks hypothetical, temporal, and concessive relationships between clauses through post-predicate particles attached after the full finite predicate of the antecedent clause. Each linked predicate is fully finite — it carries its own person indexing, polarity, aspect, and any clause-final evidential — and the particle follows, belonging to neither of the two clauses it joins Nakagawa (2024: 514); Refsing (1986: 238). The principal members of the conditional–concessive subsystem are: yakun (hypothetical conditional), yak ‘if, when (habitual or evaluative)’ and yakne (evaluative and oral-literary conditionals), ciki / cik (mood-restricted conditional), kor in its conditional use (habitual or temporal), yakka (concessive and permissive), and korka (adversative).

Two dimensions organize the system: the realis status of the antecedent clause, and the sentence type the particle requires or permits in the matrix clause. Satō's dedicated study of Chitose conditional expressions finds that Ainu conditionals impose no restriction tied to epistemic-judgement mood, yet they do impose restrictions linked to directive and interrogative illocution — a distributional pattern not predicted by hierarchies of conditionality derived from Japanese Satō (2009: 53–54).

These particles are conjunctive particles (接続助詞) in Nakagawa's classification: post-predicate, bound forms distinct from the free connective adverbs such as orowa 'and then' and rapokke 'meanwhile', which can stack after them Nakagawa (2024: 337, 347–352, 516). The architecture of the whole clause-linking inventory is set out in Chapter 131 (Clause Linkage in Ainu: Typology and Inventory); cause and purpose particles are treated in Chapter 136 (Causal and Purpose Clauses (kusu)), and the complementizer uses of kuni, yak, and kusu in indirect speech belong to Chapter 107 (The kuni Complementizer and Purpose Complements).

135.2 yakun — the hypothetical conditional

Yakun is the broadest and most frequent of the conditional particles, attested in Saru and Chitose with declarative, imperative, interrogative, and conjectural matrix clauses alike; Satō's study finds no mood restriction on it Satō (2009: 51–53); Nakagawa (2024: 347). Its semantic scope covers the hypothetical one-off conditional: the protasis states a premise and the matrix presents its consequence. Japanese distributes comparable functions across three conditional forms (レバ, タラ, ナラ); Ainu lays them largely on yakun, so a Japanese rendering must disambiguate by context Satō (2009: 53).

The etymology is transparent: conditional yak ‘if, when’ plus the allative/attributive postposition un ‘to, toward (allative)’, a segmentation reported for Shizunai by Refsing and supported by morpheme decomposition Refsing (1986: 256). The particle can also head a sentence independently, with the anaphoric reading 'in that case, then', a free-standing use that marks its partial grammaticalization beyond the strictly bound conditional Nakagawa (2024: 347); Ijäs (2023).

Refsing notes a 'when'-nuance in Shizunai realis contexts, where yakun attaches after an event already in progress or completed, yielding something closer to 'when X happened, Y followed' Refsing (1986: 256) ‹corpus-suggested›.

The protasis of a yakun conditional may carry its own evidential tail before the particle, since the verified ordering is [VP] – evidential – connective. The sequence hawe ne yakun 'if (it is said that) X' presents the protasis as reported hearsay before conditionalizing it; ruwe ne yakun presents it as established fact Nakagawa (2024: 393). The interface with the evidential system is discussed in the final section of this chapter.

135.3 yak and yakne — habitual and evaluative conditionals

Where yakun handles one-off hypotheticals, yak marks a habitual or law-like premise whose consequence the speaker evaluates. Its hallmark is a strong tendency to be followed by the evaluative predicates pirka ‘be good’ or wen ‘be bad’, or by a directive expression; it carries a warning nuance when the evaluation is negative Nakagawa (2024: 349); Refsing (1986: 256–257); Satō (2008: 50–51).

The idiomatic frame yak pirka 'it would be good if one did X' functions as mild advice or prescription ('one should X'); its negative counterpart yak wen 'it would be bad if one did X' conveys prohibition or warning ('one must not X') Nakagawa (2024: 349). Both frames can be reinforced by anak / anakne, easir 'only then', or tasi Refsing (1986: 256–257). These obligation frames differ from the permissive frames yakka pirka / yakka wen built on the concessive particle, treated below.

In the Ishikari dialect the sequence yak easir (conditional yak plus easir 'only then') extends the evaluative conditional into an explicit obligation construction — 'it is only fitting if one does X' — moving from evaluation toward necessity ‹contested›; the analysis is proposed in community discussion and awaits corroboration from a primary grammar of Ishikari (nukopoli, aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026) 2026).

Yakne functions similarly to yak but is associated with prayer and oral-literary register; yakne pirka is extremely rare and the form appears mainly in the fixed phrase wa ne yakne (sequential wa plus copula ne plus conditional yakne), concentrated in kamuy yukar and prayer texts Nakagawa (2024: 349).

135.4 ciki/cik — the mood-restricted conditional

Ciki (Shizunai, Samani, and Tokachi cik) presents a premise for which the speaker issues a command or asks a question; the particle consequently requires an imperative or interrogative matrix clause and is ill-formed with a declarative Satō (2009: 50–51); Nakagawa (2024: 350); Refsing (1986: 255). This places ciki at the opposite end of the mood-freedom scale from yakun. The stock formula opening instructions and demonstrations illustrates the imperative use:

Refsing characterizes Shizunai cik as carrying an assumption: the speaker takes the protasis to be true or imminent and issues a directive or question on that basis, distinguishing it from the purely hypothetical yakun Refsing (1986: 255). In the Horobetsu and Chitose dialects, ciki overlaps in use with the sequential-discovery particle akusu — it can mark factual discovery ('did X, and then found Y') — a temporal reading absent from the mood-restricted Saru form Nakagawa (2024: 350–351) ‹contested›.

The etymology of ciki is not settled by the primary grammars. A community-proposed segmentation reads the particle as ci (a continuative or plural auxiliary attested in most dialects outside Saru and Chitose) plus ki 'do', making the conditional a lexicalized construction; the primary sources treat the form as an unanalyzed particle ‹contested› (nukopoli, aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026) 2024). A diachronic connection between the conditional ciki and the homophonous adverb ciki 'now' — pointing to a grammaticalization path from 'now (if …)' toward the conditional–admonitive — is advanced in community discussion but likewise awaits support from primary sources ‹speculative› (antitwilight, aynu-corpora Discord (2023–2026) 2024).

135.5 Conditional kor — temporal and habitual

The particle kor ‘while; when; have’ carries two distinct conjunctive uses — simultaneity ('〜しながら') and a habitual or general-causation conditional ('〜するたびに / 〜すると') — that are sometimes indistinguishable in context Nakagawa (2024: 340, 347); Ijäs (2023). The simultaneity use is treated in Chapter 134 (Simultaneous kor 'while' and Overlapping-Event Clauses); the present section concerns the conditional reading.

In the conditional use, kor encodes general causation or a recurrent event: 'whenever X, Y'. This differs from yakun (one-off hypothetical) in that the protasis describes something that holds repeatedly or as a general law. Satō finds that conditional kor takes a declarative matrix in general-causation statements; for a one-off individual event the particle is restricted to wh-interrogative matrices Satō (2009: 51). The Shizunai equivalents are konno / koonno, and those of Horobetsu, Shiranuka, and Kushiro are ko, all serving the conditional function that Saru assigns to kor Nakagawa (2024: 348); Refsing (1986: 248–249).

A formal-noun tail pe ne / p ne frequently closes the matrix of a kor conditional, yielding the reading 'it is the sort of thing that happens when X' and underlining the habitual or general-truth character of the pattern Nakagawa (2024: 347). This is an instance of the nominalizer p functioning as a connective after a saturated clause; the formal-noun continuum is treated in Chapter 131 (Clause Linkage in Ainu: Typology and Inventory).

135.6 The realis and mood-constraint split: a comparative table

Satō's study, based on Chitose data with consultant Shirasawa Nabe, produces the following typological finding: Ainu conditionals are mood-constrained but not in the way Japanese conditionals are. Japanese conditionals tend to be organized around epistemic-judgement mood; Ainu conditionals impose no such restriction on yakun, yet they restrict ciki to imperative or interrogative matrices and restrict conditional kor to declarative (for general truths) or wh-interrogative (for individual events) Satō (2009: 53–54). The table below summarizes the five particles Satō compares; the factual conditionals akusu and awa are included for completeness and are treated in detail in Chapter 133 (The hine/akusu Contrast and Switch-Reference-Like Linkage).

Satō frames the finding against Japanese typology: Japanese has no conditional restricted to imperative or interrogative matrices, whereas Ainu has two (ciki and conditional kor); Japanese has conditionals restricted to epistemic-judgement mood, while Ainu has none. Whether this constitutes evidence against a universal conceptual hierarchy of conditionality is an open question ‹contested› Satō (2009: 53–54).

135.7 yakka — concessive and permissive

Yakka 'even if, even though' is the concessive particle. Corpus counts place it at roughly 7,500 tokens in the aligned Hokkaido corpus, the highest among the conditional–concessive particles and a signal of its frequency in narrative and daily speech alike Nakagawa (2024: 352). The etymology is transparent: conditional yak ‘if, when’ plus scalar ka ‘even, also’, literally 'even if', the same analysis given for Shizunai by Refsing Refsing (1986: 254). Dialect variants yakkay (Tokachi, Shiranuka) and yakkayki (Kushiro verse) carry an emphatic or rhythmic suffix found also on korkay Nakagawa (2024: 352).

Nakagawa distinguishes two readings by the temporal orientation of the protasis. With a future or hypothetical protasis, yakka yields a suppositional concessive: 'whatever happens with X, Y holds'. With a past protasis the reading shifts toward adversative: 'though X occurred, Y is/was so' Nakagawa (2024: 352). The following example shows both yakun and yakka in a single utterance:

The idiomatic frames yakka pirka and yakka wen are the primary permissive and non-permissive constructions of Hokkaido Ainu. Yakka pirka licenses an action for the addressee ('you may X'); yakka wen withholds that license ('you may not X') Ijäs (2023); Refsing (1986: 254). These differ structurally and semantically from the obligation frames yak pirka / yak wen, which prescribe or prohibit an action as a habitual norm rather than granting or denying a right. The permissive and deontic dimensions of the conditional system connect to the broader modal apparatus in Chapter 119 (Epistemic Modality, Dubitative, Intentive, and Irrealis) and to the imperative constructions of Chapter 114 (Imperative and Prohibitive (Directive Mood)).

A distinct use builds a parallel-listing construction from the pattern [NP] ne yakka [NP] ne yakka …, surveying nominal alternatives under the concessive and asserting that the main clause holds regardless of which alternative obtains ('whether X or Y, both X and Y') Nakagawa (2024: 355–356).

135.8 korka and hikeka — adversative

Korka 'but, however' marks the matrix clause as counter to the expectation raised by the preceding clause. Corpus frequency of roughly 3,700 tokens confirms its steady use across oral literature and modern prose Nakagawa (2024: 351). The etymology is the same construction-type as yakka: conditional kor ‘when; while’ plus scalar ka ‘even, also’ — literally 'even when' — pointing to an original conditional reading that has shifted entirely toward counter-expectation Nakagawa (2024: 351); Ijäs (2023). The dialect variant korkay (Samani, Tokachi, Shiranuka, Kushiro) carries the same emphatic suffix found in yakkay Nakagawa (2024: 351).

Hikeka (Ishikari ikeka; Shiranuka and Kushiro ikekay) occupies overlapping semantic space. Some analysts classify it under concession (譲歩) rather than adversative (逆接), but its distribution in attested texts is largely interchangeable with korka Nakagawa (2024: 351–352); Satō (2008: 52) ‹contested›. Etymologically it is the loose-link formal noun hike ‘thing, fact (linking noun)’ plus ka ‘even, also’, a formation parallel to the kor + ka source of korka.

135.9 Interface with the evidential system

The conditional and concessive particles of this chapter attach outside the clause-final evidential frame. The ordering [finite VP] – evidential nominalizer – connective is verified: hawe ne yakun 'if (it is reported that) X', ruwe ne akusu 'and (as established fact) Y was then discovered', and ruwe ne korka 'though X is the case' are all attested Nakagawa (2024: 393). The evidential sits above clause-internal aspect but below the connective: kusu ne ruwe ne is well-formed while *ruwe ne kusu ne is not, confirming that the connective scopes over the evidential Nakagawa (2024: 393). The evidential paradigm is treated in Chapter 121 (ruwe ne — the Inferential / Visual-Trace Evidential).

A cross-linguistically notable asymmetry at this seam was identified by Satō: the factual conditional akusu can follow a ruwe ne tail — the functional equivalent of Japanese のだ — whereas the Japanese factual conditional と / たら rejects a preceding のだ. Ainu thus allows [clause — established fact — discovery-link], while Japanese does not; this difference argues that the interaction of evidentiality with clause-linking is organized differently in the two languages Satō (2009: 52–53).

The deontic constructions built on the conditional system — yak pirka / yak wen (obligation and prohibition) and yakka pirka / yakka wen (permission and non-permission) — intersect with the modal and epistemic system of Chapter 119 (Epistemic Modality, Dubitative, Intentive, and Irrealis) and with the imperative and prohibitive constructions of Chapter 114 (Imperative and Prohibitive (Directive Mood)).